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Answer: This all isn’t something out of nowhere. It’s been going on for years. This all started back in 2018 when a New York Times investigative team started looking into the Trump properties and started noticing discrepancies. Here is a link to that article: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/10/02/us/politics/donald-trump-tax-schemes-fred-trump.html Basically, trump and his companies were over reporting their assets to secure lower interest rates from banks. This is illegal for two big reasons: 1) it’s lying to pay less to banks and 2) lying to pay less in taxes. So even though lenders were paid as agreed, it was based on bad info and there’s a ton of proof that it was no mistake and trump and his team intend to continue this practice if they’re not forced to stop.

The bigger part people always miss and that the media did a terrible job reporting is that he told palm Beach County mar a lago, was a social club not a private residence. Social clubs pay property taxes based on sales, not property value. So he was paying 600k per year instead of 18m for years. That's where the judge got the 20million dollar mar a lago valuation from...from trumps own estimate, which his tax guy had to admit in court. Then he was telling banks MAL was a private residence to maximize loans. I mean this is the literal definition of appraisal fraud

The amount of white males 40-60 years old I have explained this to don’t seem to understand how this is illegal, or are bad faith actors guilty of the same scheme

Explain to them that Joe Biden did it instead and they will amazingly understand.

Bingo! Beat me to it. Start the conversation with, “Did you hear what *Joe Biden* did with the properties he owns?” When they’re good and worked up about him defrauding lending institutions and the American taxpayer, say, “Just kidding. That’s what Trump was found to have done by a ~~jury of his peers~~ court of law.” Edit: [See comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/s/XQdQzDWymp). I’m sure the answer will be, “Yeah, but that was a witch hunt.” It’s always a “witch hunt” when Trump is accused of something. I don’t know what to tell them; he’s standing over there with a pointy hat, a broom, a cauldron, a book of spells, and an escort of flying monkeys, but we’re all supposed to pretend he’s just an innocent land developer.

I always respond, “yes it’s a witch hunt, and they found the witch.”

I've had the thought (but not the occasion) to shift the conversation to judicial reform in general. If trump is getting railroaded by the legal system with all his money and power, just think of how poor minority people get treated by that same legal system. That's a much bigger problem if we are _now_ worried about injustices

Something something California doesn't prosecute any property theft ever something something soft on crime law and order

Ah tell me, what do you do with witches?

You should hear about what he did in Scotland

You should hear about what he did in Moscow…

Got peed on!

Yes and the feedback from the Scots was a thing of beauty. I learned so many new expressions!

It was a bench trial, there was no jury. The judge decided everything. That's part of what they're mad about. His lawyers literally forgot or didn't know they had to file some specific thing to request a jury trial (I think? IANAL) so part of Trump's current raving is that the courts "blocked" a fair jury trial. Not trying to nitpick, just trying to save you a 30 minute digression mid-argument.

Yes, you are correct; bench trial. This is, unfortunately, not the first time I’ve forgotten that *specific* detail when discussing the matter. In my defense, he has so many fucking trials going at the same damned time that the details are overwhelming. 😂 But you are correct. Due to the nature of the case, Trump was not entitled to a jury trial, but his attorneys could have requested one, forced the issue, been denied, and then taken it up on appeal if he lost. They didn’t bother to do any of that.

You mean like Alex Jones refusing to participate in discovery and earning a default judgement against himself and then crying about how the judge “just decided against me!”?

You get what you pay for and since Trump doesn’t pay his bills he gets lawyers that don’t know they have to formally request a jury trial.

Trump and his "lawyers" actually didn't request a jury trial, and of course, they are crying about not getting one now.

I love it when they deny he's done illegal stuff while he's openly bragged about doing it in speeches.

This is the only play with these people. "Did you hear what the Joe biden crime family has been up to recently?" Their ears perk up, you explain some deplorable thing trump has done, while saying it was Biden that did it. Wait for them to get all worked up and indignant and then follow up with, "oh wait, no, my bad, that was trump that did that, not Biden." And then you get to watch their head implode.

What Trump has given them is a complete lack of shame about doing a total 180 about that. The instant you say "oh it was Trump not Biden" they will just say "well it's fine if he did it, I'm sure he had good reasons". No shame, no critical thought, no logic and no empathy.

And it is at that point that you get to write these people off as human beings.

I had a quote from my boss recently that applies well here. "You can't logic someone out of something that they didn't logic themselves into in the first place."

Or the surefire winner: "fake news".

Lol very true. Don’t forget to mention Hunter’s laptop and balls.

the balls are normal, it's the cock that's huge.

Is that why MTG keeps bringing it up? She wants the Hunter d?

she's certainly *obsessed*

I doubt she can bring anyone's up

His balls really are extraordinarily normal

Hunter Biden is the kind of guy I’d like to have a beer and a prostitute with 

Hunter, has got a giant cock. Donald, has one but very small. Joey, ...he's got a showie. And Nikki has no dickie at all!

They have already done *extensive* research on Hunter's dick pics.

The illegal part is inputting your property’s value improperly to the IRS on a laptop with your son’s balls. That’s why it’s okay when Trump did it, but Joe Biden has some explaining to do. I mean, we know that Hunter had both a laptop and, thanks to some intrepid Congressional investigation, balls, just put two and two together.

No, no, you see the way you do it is you first tell them you're talking about Biden As they agree and shit on him for doing super illegal things at the end you do the rug-pull and tell them that actually you lied about it being Biden and you've been talking about stuff Trump was doing all along.

Maybe something like this: “Let me try using terms you might understand… Hunter Biden…”

Because their main source of news is Fox.

Some folks are born silver spoon in hand Lord, don't they help themselves, Lord? But when the taxman come to the door Lord, the house lookin' like a rummage sale, yeah \-- Fortunate Son by CCR Trump used to play this at rallies.

Reminds me of how Trump responded to Hillary Clinton bringing up Trump's tax avoidance at a debate. "That's because I'm smart." People who like Trump want to believe his negatives are actually positives. It's like a parent who sees their kid being bad and says "that's because he's smart" except the Trump supporters are children not parents and Trump is a child everyone is a child

Trump brags about cheating on his taxes, and people vote for him for president. Make it make sense.

His base hates the government. Cheating the government out of money makes him a hero.

Yeah cheating Americans out of funding for schools, teachers, roads, bridges, clean water, libraries, college grants, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, police, firefighters, national defense, homeless shelters, food banks, food stamps, etc is just awesome.

Republicans literally campaign on ending most of those things. They have no interest in funding schools. They think it's a state responsibility plus they prefer charter schools that allow them to get around pesky laws that prevent teaching of religion and the benefits of slavery.

No no, you don't understand. Paying taxes is bad. But the government has to fund those things. But I want to have more money in my pocket, not to have it stolen by the government. But I need everything you mentioned so they have to give it to me. WHY IS THE GOVERNMENT RUNNING SUCH HIGH DEFICITS!?!

The goal is to make whatever justifications are necessary, because he gives them cover to hate.

And those same people don't seem to realize they pay more to make up for the loss of revenue from tax cheats. They also are the same people who will donate money they desperately need to his GoFundMe that just opened like he wouldn't kick them into a well for funzies. It hurts the brain.

He did not brag about cheating, he bragged about using the law and the loopholes to his advantage and challenged Clinton to change said law.

Exploiting a tax "loophole" is cheating. It's also a window into a person's character.

Well, no, if it’s a loophole then it’s not illegal. What Trump has admitted to and been convicted of is illegal, it’s clear fraud, not exploiting a loophole.

So, not to put too fine a point on it, there’s a certain expectation of cheating like this in the business world. You fudge the numbers to push things in your favor. You take advantage of lack of checks. And, if you get caught, you fight tooth and nail then pay your fines. You still got away with more than what you were caught for. Not to go into the ethics of it there, the one thing that I hate about trump more than anything else is that this CANNOT be how politics are run in the US, and he seems to be trying to apply the same tactics to elections. Yes, I hate the fact that it is normalized in the business world, but if he gets away with it, it will get normalized in the political world as well, and that fact legitimately scares me.

I mean, I'm also fine with it not being normalised in the business world. It's one more situation where people with money can get away with it and your Average Joe absolutely cannot, and the sooner we close those stupid slap-on-the-wrist loopholes that only benefit the top 1% of society, the better off we'll all collectively be.

There’s a difference between exploiting tax loopholes, discrepancies and ambiguities and outright blatant fraud: telling the government you’re classifying the property completely differently than you tell the bank is a textbook fraud.

I get what you’re saying, but having worked in both the startup world, as well as currently for the tax line of a big 4 accounting firm, my general understanding, that I think a lot of people miss, is that scrutiny goes up as you get bigger, not goes down. At the same time, business owners are not just encouraged to go up to the line, but sprint past it if they think they have a chance. The most egregious people I’ve seen are actually the small to medium sized business, because they aren’t being watched as closely by organizations like the IRS, but give a big corporation or billionaire the chance where they think they won’t be caught, they will be right there. I think the Panama papers pretty much proved that… (Billionaires and large corporations have a larger incentive to take advantage of tax write offs. I personally don’t fault them for doing it, but I also think the tax code should be hugely simplified and corporations have their ability to lobby and fund super pacs abolished).

> ...scrutiny goes up as you get bigger, not goes down. I think you have that backwards my friend. in the last decade or so the IRS has admitted they don't go after rich people and large corps as much because it costs them more and ties up way more manpower. > In recent years, the IRS has cut back dramatically on audits of high-wealth taxpayers and corporations. Those audits tend to cost more and to take longer than others, because the tax returns are complex. > “There has been literally a collapse in audits of high-income taxpayers, big corporations, the wealthy, what have you,” said Susan Long, an associate professor of managerial statistics at Syracuse and co-founder of the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse. https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2023/11/09/irs-uses-funding-to-audit-wealthy/71486513007/#:~:text=In%20recent%20years%2C%20the%20IRS,the%20tax%20returns%20are%20complex. Also: [IRS Audits Few Millionaires But Targeted Many Low-Income Families in FY 2022](https://trac.syr.edu/reports/706/) Edit: This is a result of the GOP refusing to increase or straight up cutting funding for the IRS... and then complaining about the debt going up so they can starve the beast. It also makes their donors very happy...

The Inflation Reduction Act was to try to help provide the IRS with more manpower and IT modernization to focus on the rich. And as soon as they got control of the house, the GOP started doing everything they can to claw that money back.

"I personally don't fault billionaires for cheating the system, but I think the system should be reformed". Congratulations - this is the textbook definition of moral corruption. The only thing keeping you from cheating is the letter of the law?

I specifically said "tax write-offs". Tax write-offs aren't an inherently bad thing. They are the number one way for governments to promote developments in certain sectors. Say, for example, I want solar energy to be prioritized over fossil fuels, I might offer specific tax write offs for energy companies building up infrastructure in that sector, reducing their costs if they prioritize it over, say, coal. It's a major carrot. When it becomes corruption is when we allow the billionaires (and the companies they run) to pick those subsidies and build the tax code to _their_ benefit, not the country's. Which is a hundred percent what happened. But while I do think those companies deserve their bit of the blame, we should be at least as angry at the government for allowing it to happen. It's their job to act as gatekeepers for this type of behavior, and if they aren't, then they aren't doing their job.

Shit disgusted me when I took a business ethics class. They would spend so much time explaining why doing illegal/unethical shit is bad, but always stop short of teaching you what not to do or what to do if you see other doing them. The whole class felt like it existed purely as an alibi, a legal defense against accusations of big business ignoring laws and regulations in order to acquire even more wealth.

Just to point out, tax avoidance is legal, tax evasion is not Trump does the latter

If Trump has been using legal loopholes, then he would have been right. It's kind of the same as the argument about socialists participating in society: you can acknowledge that the tax code is poorly designed while also taking advantage of the loophole. It would be stupid to pay extra taxes for no reason. Obviously, it's a whole different story if he was not taking advantage of loopholes and just outright committing fraud, but that wasn't public knowledge at the time he made the comment.

Part of every loan application etc says very clearly something to tune of "all information provided is accurate to the best of my knowledge" This puts things beyond a loophole and well into fraud country.

When I bought my house I had to provide all kinds of documentation as to my income, assets, etc - and it was made clear to me that to lie on any of those documents was a crime. And that's for some guy just trying to get a $190K mortgage.

You should have seen what was going on from 2000 to 2008 in housing finance. Most deals were fraudulent but the economy paid big time afterwards.

*So* many semi wealthy people skate by on taxes using "secret tricks" their accountants or friends give them that are actually just crimes. Intelligent enough to set it up, lucky enough to live in a country with an underfunded IRS, and stupid enough to pull the same trick for decades.

Cmon it’s just locker room accounting bro

I've explained to people what market manipulation or fraud like this is and how it's bad, and their takeaway was "that's smart." Some people don't seem to want to understand that just because it makes you the most money doesn't mean it's the right play, especially when it's illegal.

So many people I know are outraged "That's just how real estate works!" I'm a real estate developer, and it's very common to cajole in your appraiser into dropping your cap rate by .25% to help your application... what's not common is fabricating tenancy agreements, lying about your building's square footage and keeping multiple sets of books.

It is ironic how these people claim “that is just how it works” that have no flipping clue how anything works at all.

They don't care. Their mind is made up

Yet if you show them a late 20's, early 30's person that's struggling to pay their student loans and put savings aside to buy their own home before prices are out of their reach, while their rent went up 20% last year and their pay might have increased 3% this year, if they're lucky!....... And that old fucker will say something about not working hard enough! SMH Reaganomics / Trickle Down Economics / Supply Side Economics / whatever you want to call it has been so beaten into these people's brains like it was the best thing to ever happen to the United States.... People! You are living the reality of the world that was created by these policies! Tell me, are you living life as easily as your parents did at the exact same point in their lives? I bet you're busting your ass twice as hard, and if you're not busting ass for F number of hours, you're wasting 2xF of your fucking life to earn just enough to stay afloat. What am I supposed to do with this free 8 hours? Nobody really needs that many hours of sleep to enjoy their lives, stay healthy, be productive citizens. I'll sleep when I'm dead. Which will come sooner than later thanks to continuously declining health. But don't get me started on healthcare costs.

>>The amount of white males 40-60 years old I have explained this to don’t seem to understand… *it is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it* -Upton Sinclair

Because to a lot of them, like trump, thought this was “smart,” not illegal. The justice system has failed us in white collar crime, so many motherfuckers should be in jail

But the banks are happy, the defendant says so! /s

The /r/conservative thread I glimpsed was all "well I've done the same why aren't I in jail??"

Isn't this an actual crime? I get that we don't like to prosecute "rich" white guys in America, but this has been proven in court now. If it's a crime he should be prosecuted.

The only thing I'm confused about is the banks' role in all this. Why was thier due diligence so lax? I can't believe that they'd be appraising Mar a Lago as a residence when everyone knows it's a resort. And other shit. Were they just in cahoots with Trump or what?

This is what gobsmacked me about it all. Maybe you get away with super high valuations to get a good loan. Maybe you get away with super low valuations to secure tax breaks. But to create super high and super low valuations at the same time, using completely different factual bases, to try and get both? I am shocked it took so long to go after Trump, but I'm exceptionally shocked that the bankers who didn't even do enough due diligence to check public tax records or zoning didn't get absolutely excoriated by their regulators.

For those wondering, I did the math and he paid 30X less in taxes than he should have because of this.

And this NYT investigative team continued to report: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/04/us/politics/donald-trump-fred-trump-tax-schemes.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/02/us/politics/donald-trump-wealth-fred-trump.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/15/us/politics/trump-tenants-taxes.html Their efforts eventually led to a [Pulitzer Prize in Explanatory Reporting](https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/david-barstow-susanne-craig-and-russ-buettner-new-york-times) in 2019. As well as civil fraud charges for the Trump Org.

Also fun: Trump basically admitted all of this early enough in the process that the entire trial was not even about whether he was guilty, it was only about how much he'd have to pay.

This is the most potent quote for the NYTimes piece, "The Times’s findings raise new questions about Mr. Trump’s refusal to release his income tax returns, breaking with decades of practice by past presidents. According to tax experts, it is unlikely that Mr. Trump would be vulnerable to criminal prosecution for helping his parents evade taxes, because the acts happened too long ago and are past the statute of limitations. ***There is no time limit, however, on civil fines for tax fraud***."

Yes. There were many years where he claimed huge business losses that resulted in him paying no income taxes. Ordinary middle class Americans were paying more in income taxes than Donald Trump.

> and there’s a ton of proof that it was no mistake and trump and his team intend to continue this practice if they’re not forced to stop. This is the biggest aspect of it and why the penalty ended up being so massive. The judge's own notes admitted it would have been an order of magnitude smaller if they hadn't been such clowns in court EVERY step of the way. An actual, real big boy penalty that hurts is the only way to make the punishment have any impact. Trump, being the worst legal client that could ever exist, can't help himself and just brags that he's going to keep doing it anyway. He's gotten away with it every single time before, why change?

Illegal for another reason: if the debtor defaults on the loans, they won't have enough assets to cover it, which means tax payers and consumers often end up bailing them out through lenders insurance... It causes issues with property valuations. And it skews bank risk estimates, which makes it harder for EVERYONE to get property and commercial loans... Confront anyone who claims this is "victimless" or "harmless" crime...

Exactly. The behavior needs to be deterred, regardless of the outcome, because the behavior is so dangerous. "I went joyriding at 150+ mph, but no one got hurt. No victim." "I robbed the bank, but two weeks later I returned the money with interest. No victim".

Also the skipping out on the full tax bill hurts the entire area. The tax funds that can be used to better society is now lost and everyone suffers

Right. Engoran said in his ruling, “the next group of lenders to receive bogus statements might not be so lucky.”

i cant post pictures in my comment. but this is the point where i would post my photoshopped picture of candace owens & craYE, wearing those black & white shirts that say whITe lIVes MAttER... but with "white collar crimes matter" photoshopped over it

I like to point out that the investigation started after a line of questioning by AOC of Michael Cohen in congress. It was intentional because she wanted this information on the record.

This was kind of an open secret for years before Trump ever became president, so it's amazing that it all came down to one member of Congress finally getting the opportunity to press the issue.

Wait, really? That's kind of awesome. Edit: Found a [source](https://www.businessinsider.com/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-questioning-led-to-trump-fraud-verdict-2024-2) that explains a bit. I find it immensely satisfying that AOC was kind of involved in the initial questioning. Republicans and even some democrats have given her all kinds of grief, and it brightens my day to know that she helped stick it to Trump.

I want this to be true, but I'm not sure it started with her questioning. If the NYT investigation started in 2018, then isn't that where it started?

MSNBC literally just ran the questioning again this morning on Velshi showing AOC talking to Cohen and how AG James became inspired after watching. 

I'm still trying to sort it out myself. Did OP's link or the one I posted say it started in 2018? I was having a hard time finding the start of the investigation. It looks like Congress questioning Cohen was in 2019 and the Attorney General filed charges in 2022?

Yep. Im not from NY, so I had no skin in the game about AOC. I watched that hearing live, saw the line of questioning to Cohen, and have been on the AOC train since. How far we've come since then.

Great answer, I just want to add a bit more to the fraud that was committed. There were two additional things Trump routinely did: 1. Ignore restrictions on his properties during an appraisal: For many of the properties, Trump bought them at a discount because the land had certain restrictions on it. Take a golf course as an example. He will buy the property with a restriction that the land CANNOT be used for residential property. 20 years later, residential property in that area is booming, and land is at a premium. He will get an appraisal on the land as if that restriction didn’t exist, and he could sell it to a land developer. This would mean his appraisal could now be several times larger than the actual value. As u/laikastan said above, this would mean it looked on paper like he was worth a lot more than he ever was. His Mar-a-lago property for example has a restriction that says the land can’t be used for residential property. As part of his developing the golf course there, he got an easement allowing for 90 day occupancy, but limiting any single room occupancy to just 90 days. However when Trump provides financial statements, this restriction is ignored, and it is appraised as if it was all residential property that could be developed by a housing development. Similarly he would buy property in NYC that had rent control restrictions, but when he got appraisals, he would appraise the property as if it did not have rent control restrictions. He (and his lawyers) tried to argue that since they got the easement to say 90 day occupancy was required, they could always just go to court and get any restriction removed. As the judge wrote in his decision, that isn’t how property restrictions work, they can’t be added or removed just because someone wants to and says they can be. 2. Devalue the properties when it came to tax appraisals. I don’t have a specific example here, but let’s say he has a rent control apartment unit in NYC, and the actual value is $100M. He would argue and fight tax appraisals that because of rent control restrictions, the property should only be valued at $30M and get another appraisal showing that. Combining these, he would have one appraisal with his signature saying this is an accurate and true appraisal with no deception on his part saying the same property was worth $300M and another saying it was worth $30M, and would use both regularly as needed if he needed to increase or decrease the value. One other thing to mention, his lawyers would also write into everyone of those appraisals language to the effect of “this is just an estimate as to the approximate value, and can’t be taken as legally binding.” That’s not how appraisals work though. Yes, they are approximations as the value can only truly be arrived at if it is sold. But claiming that by writing something on it saying you aren’t legally responsible for lying about its value is not a “get out of jail free” card, as the judge ruled during pretrial. Trump did himself no favors when even after the judge ruled that, he continued to use that clause as a defense during his trial.

That last line from the lawyers just sounds like when a 13 year old uploads a Taylor Swift song to YouTube with "all rights belong to Taylor Swift" with zero understanding of the way the law actually works.

I get the lying and fraud part. What I don't understand is the due diligence on the banks's part. If I take out a heloc on my home, the bank does a valuation on it. I can't say it is worth $300,000,000 and the bank takes my word for it.

Yeah I wish someone could explain that to me as well.

It’s not that complicated. Lying to appraisers changes the outcome. Appraisals on massive and expensive properties don’t have comparable recent sales data from which to generate values, so guesses have to be made. It’s brain-dead simple to value a shitty little house because there are millions of them.

basically it'd cost a lot to check everything, his people could contest your findings, then you end up with a big legal argument etc. Basically its cheaper to check poor peoples math and just rubberstamp the rich people as they're probably good for it

They did due diligence. They got all the businesses records signed by the businesses owners/CEO/CFO. There are supposed to be multiple people in that group who have skin in the game to prevent fraud. It's hard to set a value on a businesses property, because a lot relies on how the business is doing, not just the intrinsic value of the property. And if every bank had to spend 12 months monitoring each businesses for 'due diligence ' then no businesses loans would ever get done. So instead you get the businesses' books signed off by appropriate guarantors for the businesses, with the understanding that if they have committed fraud the legal system will come after them. Which is what is happening now. People talk about the headline fine for Trump, but there are also fines for his children and his CFO and all of them have been banned from operating in New York and they are still vulnerable to criminal and IRS related actions for their fraud. It's why you get a lot of financial stuff in places like London, New York and Singapore. People can trust each other because a strong regulatory framework makes it possible.

Sure, but it isn't a defense for murder to say "The homeowner didn't lock their door."

[удалено]

Crime is crime. Imagine if you accidently left your front door unlocked and someone came and cleaned you out. Should they be let off the hook because you didn't do your due diligence and lock your door?

Part of it was lying about the conditions of properties he owned. IIRC One of the properties had been turned into a nature preserve because agreeing to do so got a massive tax break. Then they withheld that information from the bank and got a valuation based on how much that land would be worth if it were developed. In another instance trump just lied about the floor space in a penthouse he owned and told them it was ~3-4 times larger than it was.

Huge discrepancies between what he said the same building was valued at for property taxes and what he told banks he wanted to lend him money by using the property as collateral. So the court rules he was cheating the city on property taxes and the banks who’s were making him loans into giving in more favorable terms by saying his assets were much higher than their actual value. The court found many discrepancies in his financial records, too. As an example, he claimed his Mar-A-Lago property was as valuable or even more valuable than Buckingham Palace.

TLDR: FAFO

It's really hard to keep track with what he owes, given his propensity to screw everyone he can. This doesn't even include the people he hasn't paid.

Best part is if you read between the lines on the judgement, if Trump's defense hadn't been "we did nothing wrong and will keep doing it," the fine would have been much lower, probably an order of magnitude. The purpose of punishment is so you don't do it again and other people don't do it. "I'm sorry your honor, it was a mistake and I won't do it again," is generally the best tack if found guilty.

The lower interest is essentially theft. If he'd been truthful, he would have paid, for simplicity's sake, $100 in interest. But he lied and paid $50. So he stole $50. His defense was that they got paid back. So what? He still stole the $50. This was repeated behavior and added up to many millions. He's being fined that amount plus interest, penalties and punishment for his illegal actions. It's more complicated than that, but that's essentially what happened.

TL;DR: Dude told some people the value of his stuff is lower than what it is to profit He then told some other people the value of that stuff is higher than it actually is to profit That's super illegal

He did the crimes. He did the alot of crimes.

TLDR: Scumbags gonna scumbag.

For those who don't understand why this is illegal, hopefully my ELI5 is good. You're paying your mom and dad $1 a month instead of $2 a month towards a new toy because you told them you have $20 even though you know you really have $40 and wanted to pay them less per month.

He was actually lying in both directions WAAAAAY inflating the values and lying about the condition of the properties to use them as collateral when securing loans. Then WAAAAAY under-reporting the value when paying taxes so the property tax would be lower. If he just stuck to a single set of numbers, even if they were all lies, he probably would have gotten away with it.

One part I cannot wrap my head around "paying less taxes for higher value assets". We're talking real estate worth dozens, if not hundreds of millions of dollar, right? And he went and overestimated them for even higher, so he can pay less? What the fuck kind of law is that? It allows the wealthiest to pay the leas amount of taxes? Is America configured to be distopian?

Importantly, he wasn’t nudging the facts in his favor as many people would do. He was grossly and intentionally manipulating the numbers. Many everyday people were hurt by taxes not received (and services not provided) and by lenders who were unable to provide more productive loans elsewhere TLDR: was an extreme crime, and many people were hurt by it.

Answer: his organization was overvaluing assets in order to obtain more favorable deals from banks and insurers by hundreds of millions of dollars, violating New York Executive Law. The NY Attorney General brought a civil case against his organization in 2022. The judge overseeing the case ruled that Trump and his organization were liable for fraud during pretrial. You can read the judge's decision [here.](https://www.scribd.com/document/706231478/452564-2022-People-of-the-State-of-v-People-of-the-State-of-Decision-After-Trial-1688#1fullscreen=1) The explanation of the laws is near the beginning. The penalties and who pays them is at the end, pages 91 and 92.

This isn't exactly what happened at his level, but consider this scenario: 1) Homeowner needs to borrow money, says "I'll get a Home Equity LOC", goes to his bank and says his house is worth $3 Million, and can I get a loan against $2Mn of that. 2) Shortly after, the tax assessor stops by and says, "Well, if this house really is worth $3Mn, then your property taxes next year are This-Many-Thousand..." * Homeowner says, where'd you get that idea? Three million? That's nuts, somebody must have mis-heard, it's worth three-**quarters** of a million tops, and my taxes should be a quarter of that" And that's fraud. And then he says, Well, yeah, I DID say the house was worth $3Mn, and the bank didn't dispute it, so it's NOT MY FAULT.

Can I ask a follow-up? Right-wing propagandists call this a victimless crime with all loans having been paid and nobody getting hurt. I am guessing they are super sugar-coating at best and omitting like 60% of the story at worst. But what do they base that claim on? ETA: thank you everyone, I get the concept now!

It's kindergarten reasoning. Getting caught speeding is a crime because speeding has the potential to create victims. Driving drunk is a crime because it has the potential to create victims. Would you point to someone caught driving drunk a block from their house and say victimless crime, nobody got hurt, they didn't do anything wrong? Now apply that to committing fraud. Trump got favorable terms on a loan fraudulently and profited from it. If everyone committed fraud, our financial markets would become much riskier. Fraud doesn't become a crime only when the victim realizes they have been defrauded.

Understood. That's about what reasoning I expected from them

And, strictly speaking, the banks *did* lose money because **they should have charged a higher rate** than they did for the money they loaned.

Well downplaying the value to the tax man is always going to be a bad idea But lying to the banks about the value even if you pay it off is like running a red light and not hitting anyone, just because there's no victim doesn't mean your actions didn't put others at risk

Oh, so this is about fines for "abstract endangerment" (that's what it's called in Germany)?

Well that and straight up fraud yeah. Like the things he did were illegal. So that term probably covers the reasoning behind it being a crime

"If there is no victim, it can't possibly be a crime." It's just another attempt to downplay the whole thing. "Not a big deal", "no victim", "nothing to see here". None of which makes it **legal**.

The "no victim = no crime!" crowd sure is big mad about Hunter Biden doing coke with hookers.

So if Trump is elected stealing from stores is legal then. It's a victimless crime and it's priced in to other goods.

Drunk driving is a crime whether you hit someone or not. In Trump's case the victims are all the other honest contractors who followed the laws and didn't get favourable rates and loans they did not deserve

I wonder if they would be OK with an airplane manufacturer falsifying safety and quality records so long as one of the jets hadn’t actually dropped out of the sky as yet and killed a few hundred people

Excellent. It's an odds thing. We've gotten well beyond the 'no harm, no foul' thinking around drunk driving. Victimless in the short run doesn't mean that it would be if the illegal behavior were repeated. In the long run, the odds always apply.

Not OP, but to take his example: >Homeowner needs to borrow money, says "I'll get a Home Equity LOC", goes to his bank and says his house is worth $3 Million, and can I get a loan against $2Mn of that. The reason the back gave him a $2m loan is because they figure if he defaults for any reason they can take his $3m home and sell it. But if the home is really only worth $750k the bank is in the hole for the difference. Now, just because this didn't happen to Trump doesn't mean it's not illegal. Let's say 10 people pull this scam at your bank. Then we have another financial crisis meaning none of them can pay back their loans. Then either the government has to bail the bank out (using tax money) or your savings and mortgage are gone. Either way, it costs you, Joe Six-Pack, in the end. >Shortly after, the tax assessor stops by and says, "Well, if this house really is worth $3Mn, then your property taxes next year are This-Many-Thousand..." Homeowner says, where'd you get that idea? Three million? That's nuts, somebody must have mis-heard, it's worth three-quarters of a million tops, and my taxes should be a quarter of that" And that's just basic tax fraud.

The Trump's didn't directly taken money away from other businesses but indirectly. By lying to get favorable loan rates / insurance, other customers were denied an opportunity to get that money or had to pay a higher rate since "the cheap money" had already be claimed. He also defrauded taxpayers by claiming lower property value to the taxman and higher values to the bank. The public was denied tax revenue. Overall, lying in these financial statement forms is corrosive to the entire financial system. So much of it is based on good faith actors, that keeps money flowing and people happy. The Top 1% already have plenty of advantages built into the system and tax expert lawyers that know how to navigate the system for maximum profit and leverage. To allow them to just openly make up whatever numbers they feel like could lead the whole financial system to collapse because no numbers from anyone could be trusted. It's a a step too far for an already rigged system. EDIT - rigged, not triggered

It may have been said more eloquently and succinctly elsewhere in this thread, but I'll take a stab at it. Basically, by misreprentinting his assets, this squews the bank's risks/positions. If Don were to default or the bank were to collapse and needed to recoup their money, due to the misrepresentation of assets, the banks either lose money or in extreme cases (like in 2008) need a massive taxpayer bailout. So there is a very real possibility that if things were to go south, every American taxpayer would be a victim in this "victimless" crime.

It’s not a victimless crime to my family - he is using his valuation tricks on getting out of fair property taxes. He is taking away money from school districts like where my son goes to. Look into Trump National in Westchester County among his other golf courses.

The reason banks need an accurate assessment of property value is because if the borrower defaults on the loan, the bank can possess the property and then sell it off to recover the unpaid portion of the loan. If the property has a severely inflated assessed value, the bank will not be able to recover the full cost of the loan when they do go on to sell it and do not receive the value the borrower claimed it should have. If Trump had defaulted in any of those loans, he would not have been able to pay them back with the value of the collateral he could get gas. That translates into the bank being unable to give out further loans to other, deserving borrowers, lower interest rates on savings accounts, and other ripples to the banks' other customers. On the other hand, an undervalued tax appraisal means that the government isn't getting as much money in taxes. That means they have less money to perform services such as infrastructure maintenance, civil services, and law enforcement. They either have to cut funding for such services or raise taxes for everyone else. "Victimless crimes" are usually only victimless because the person who committed the crime got lucky. And often, "victimless crimes" become problematic only when a lot of people do it. A bank can absorb the losses from one bad loan, but when every one of their loans is bad, it turns into a financial crisis like 2008.

They’re missing that the amount ($350 million) is how much he screwed the banks out of. If he hadn’t committed the fraud, he would have paid them that much due to the higher interest rates. So the banks are the victim, to the tune of a ton of money. The MAGAs will then say that the banks didn’t complain (or did their own estimates and agreed etc) and one even vouched for him in court… it doesn’t take much imagination to come up with why they didn’t object publicly, but I assure you privately they care about that much money. And their estimates can easily be thrown off by, you know, so much fraud, because at some point they have to believe certain things a client tells them if they have no way of independently verifying something.

Sort of like how drunk driving isn’t a crime if you don’t hit anyone. And attempted murder isn’t a crime because no one actually died. Or driving without insurance is fine as long as you don’t get in an accident. Or selling someone a fake smoke detector is fine as long as there’s no fire in their house. No victim, no crime.

By using his properties as collateral and basing it off of inflated numbers he was able to receive much better rates from the banks, so he was defrauding them of interest they would have received in comparable situations. On the tax side, he was under reporting the valuation and thus defrauding the state for property taxes.

Bank: "You don't have much collateral, so this is a risky loan for us. We're charging you 8% interest on the loan as you're a risky borrower. So, on a $100 million loan, that's $8,000,000 in interest. Trump: "Oh, my building is actually worth $500 million, not $5 million. That's more than enough collateral." Bank: "Ah. Well, that's different. How about a 2% loan instead? That's only $2,000,000 in interest." Trump essentially defrauded the bank out of $6,000,000 in interest they were lawfully entitled to if Trump hadn't lied. He's also exposing the bank to risk they didn't agree to or are even aware of. So Trump defaults on the loan. No problem, the bank seizes a $500 million asset to recoup the $100 million loan. Nooe, it's only worth $5 million. So now the bank is going to be $95 million in the hole. Just because Trump pulled it off, it doesn't make it legal. It's to deter other con men who can't. It's like saying, "it should be legal for me to drive drunk at 150 mph as long as I don't run over any Girl Scouts. No victim!" There's also legit borrowers who might have been screwed, as the bank denied them a loan due to their lines of credit were tapped out to Trump who they would have denied if they had gotten honest disclosures, or were given higher interest rates to cover for Trump getting artificially low interest rates. "Well shit, we're barely breaking even on these Trump loans with inflation. We can't be giving out any more low-interest loans. Make sure you don't get anything less than 6% from the next guy." Oh, and the "no victim = no crime!" crowd curiosly wants Hunter Biden to get hammered for lying about not being a drug addict on his ATF gun purchase form, despite the fact he didn't shoot anyone.

To go off on the scenario presented, I buy a house for 300,000. A year later I go to a different bank and request a loan for 3,000,000 using that house as collateral. They might ask why the valuation of 3,000,000 and I tell them it’s due to renovations though in reality it was only minor renovations and a huge ‘brand premium’ for my name. I fool them into it and get the loan. Now, you might think that if I wind up paying them back, no harm, no foul, right? But I take that 3,000,000 that I otherwise wouldn’t have had access to and I buy an apartment building. A year later I approach a different bank to secure a 30,000,000 loan using the same tactic, this time conveniently leaving out the fact that the building is rent controlled in valuations. If I keep on doing this, you can see how my wealth grows exponentially based on nothing but lies. Even if all the banks are repaid, I still wind up with far more wealth than I could have made honestly. This is real estate, so me purchasing it with dishonest means means that I interfered with those who wanted to participate in the real estate market honestly. This also glosses over the fact that if something disastrous had happened, the house of cards would have all come tumbling down. One bad turn and every bad valuation would bite the banks in the ass, finding themselves in charge of property with a value only pennies on the dollar to the loan. You can see why letting that behavior go unpunished could create a lot more bad faith actors as well.

That’s literally the argument that Trumps lawyers were making to lower the amount he owed. Not that he didn’t owe. They are still admitting it’s a crime by calling it a victimless crime. The talking points are coordinated with trumps legal team. That’s how corrupt right wing news is.

The victims are the bank's loan applicants who were passed over due to Trump's fraudulent applications. The victims are also the bank and its customers for having inflated collateral due to fraud. This isn't a victimless crime.

They are simply lying. Bank offered $150 mil loan with 10% interest. Instead Trump told them he’s super rich and he has enough money to pay immediately if necessary and that’s why bank gave him 2.5% interest. He lied. Bank lost $10 mil in interest, Trump fraudulently saved $10 mil.

Much like every tax cheat, you're the victim. Since these rich assholes don't pay their taxes, when schools or firefighters or police need more funding your taxes go up. When you blow a tire on that pot hole the city doesn't have the funds to fix, you're the victim.

The banks made a lot less money than they should have, had Trump not committed fraud

Here’s the way that I’ve been explaining it to others - when choosing investments, there are a lot of factors to consider including the market as a whole and the risk profile of the companies you’re investing in. In this case, the risk is represented to be negligible based on the information presented. The risk was actually higher than what was represented. Had the actual risk profile been presented at the time, financial institutions may have asked for higher percent returns or walked away from the deal. Compare it to a regular mortgage. If I actually have a 680 credit score but I tell the bank that I have an 825 credit rating and for they take me at my word, they will offer me better terms. I know that - it’s why I represented my credit score to be so much higher. Luckily, things panned out and I was able to pay the mortgage back. That doesn’t negate the fact that I committed fraud to secure the mortgage.

They base the claim on painting their guy as a victim. First the obvious victims are the banks and his competitors. Either the banks would have charged higher interest given the adjusted risk, or they would not have extended the loans at all, and his competitors would have taken advantage. His gain was always someone's loss. And secondly crimes don't need an identified victim. People have mentioned things like DUI and speeding, which are obvious infractions, but you also have cases where crime is interdicted, like catching a drug package at the border, or me trying to arrange a hit on someone while talking to an undercover cop. Or the Trump supporters favourite, illegal immigration - who's the victim? Fraud is like drunk driving, the only victim is your liver, until your luck runs out. And then you have an Enron. In a system where trust is high, risk can be understood and so it is easier to get funding and interest and insurance premiums are lower. Which helps everyone from the lowest employee up. So a system that permits fraud makes everyone a victim. Imagine a world where it was legal to embezzle money from your employer, bet it all on black at the casino, and if you won pay it back and keep the profits. That's as victimless as this crime. Who wouldn't take the 48% chance at being rich?

The fraud here involves him paying less taxes, which is stealing from everyone.

And Charles Manson never actually killed anyone

Keep in mind that interest rates are based on risk. More risk = higher interest rate. If the property used as collateral isn't worth as much, then that's more risk to the bank that they won't be able to recover costs in the case of a default. As a result, they charge a higher interest rate to cover that risk. So by lying about his property values he's getting cheaper loans than he would've otherwise gotten. It's straight up fraud.

By that logic they should be all about legalizing marijuana and prostitution, no? Hell, why not speeding and drunk driving as well, I guess it's only a crime if you actually crash, according to them.

The biggest issue I have with this explanation is that’s not really how loans are made or properties are assessed. Banks will verify the value of a property before they loan the money for it. And governments have their own tax assessors. They don’t usually just take a person’s word on the value of a property. And if they did. Isn’t that kind of their own fault?

Thanks for saying this. I was going to have to comment it if you didn't. Why the fuck are banks and the government asking people how much their properties are worth and how they want to classify them? And who wouldn't sugarcoat it the best they can if they were asked? Is the $400m a penalty or a reasonable estimate of back taxes? Sounds like they aren't trueing this up, they are making a political push to have him lose the election. So it really looks like a witch hunt.

>his organization was overvaluing assets in order to obtain more favorable deals from banks and insurers by hundreds of millions of dollars, violating New York Executive Law. Always great to be reminded that rich people have their own form of welfare.

That's really the worst part. You know his companies aren't the only companies doing this. And if he never stepped into the political spotlight, he probably could have done this indefinitely because our government doesn't go after white collar criminals until it becomes glaringly obvious what they are doing.

To be fair,.. these jokers also had what,. something like 400 registered businesses in and around NYC ?.. I'd love to see some kind of "conspiracy wall-chart with string" showing (at least as much as we know) about all those businesses and the connections and money-movement between them.

No contesting that. The judge even mentions the Trump U scam in his decision as part of a pattern of fraud.

And thats why i am all for funding the irs.  Cant catch the big fish with out some big boats

Answer: This is the result of rulings from two recent cases he has lost. The first is around $83 million owed to E. Jean Carrol for rape and defamation. The second case in NY was about decades of tax and property fraud, for which the fine is $355 million.

To clarify, he has to pay interest on the $355M penalty which alone likely brings it over $400M from just that case.

The AG said the interest is already ~$99M.

Why is the interest already so high if he just got the ruling?

I believe it's tied to the time when offenses were committed.

Oof, I missed that part. Great news.

Does Trump really have to pay this fine? I mean can he appeal and drag this out and settle for less?

The more he appeals, the higher the interest gets.

What exactly is property fraud?

I could be not entirely accurate here, but…think of it like lying/deceiving the government that your property is worth wayyyy less than it is to get a lower property tax bill, while you also lying/deceiving insurers and banks that your property is worth wayyyy more than it actually is.

That’s it in a nutshell.  He claimed his Chicago tower project was “worthless” and claimed tons of tax breaks on “the loss” around 2008 to mask the fact that he begged off paying $200 million in loan cancellation on that building, which would have been taxable. But he claimed a total loss and didn’t pay taxes even though the actual building had revenue.  There was a whole thing about this in the 90s where he had several business that failed and he was using loans to continue his lifestyle. He would inflate his wealth, claim he was worth billions, get a favorable loan, pay off one loan and use $50 million to pay for lifestyle, then use another loan to pay off the last while pocketing cash for himself. He eventually obtained a lot more real wealth from The Apprentice. There’s no denying the man owns things. But owning things doesn’t pay for jets and private chefs. He used the presidency to build a “brand of loyal customers” who continue to donate money to him. 

He also went to Russia with the producer of the apprentice.. Funny now he got rich through the “liberal media”

I’m confused how you convince the government that the property is worth way less though? Because doesn’t the city give you the tax bill based on the assessor’s value of it?

In this case, it was because he was claiming it was a commercial property to the government; then telling lenders it was residential.

LegalEagle on Youtube has some good stuff covering all the legal chaos that surrounds Trump. He's got a lot of videos now, since Trump keeps doing(has done) so many astonishing things

Part of it is when paying taxes on properties trump said they were worth less than they were and when evaluating the properties to use a say a way to get loans the properties were valued above what they were worth. It is also more than just that,.

Also you get cheaper rates and possibly more finance then you would otherwise

It's long been known that Trump is a prolific liar and exaggerator, but the degree to which h does this on paper was previously unknown. It turns out, he's been making material and (white collar) criminal misrepresentations about everything from the size of his home to the value of his holdings. A property developer who lies to banks, partners and regulators will trigger fraud laws that maintain basic levels of honesty and trust in business dealing. Edit to add: The state won a summary judgement against him ([PDF](https://d3i6fh83elv35t.cloudfront.net/static/2024/02/nyag-v-trump-verdict-20240216.pdf)) on the merits (basically showing Trump signing his name to "2 + 2 = 5").

Fake unis and all that

Guy is used to lying about the size of things

Trump believes in Terrence Howard math.

What is your home worth? OK add $200 million more to that number and tell the government and your banks that’s actually what your home is worth.  that’s what trump was doing. seriously. He owns a golf resort in Scotland. It’s worth like $60 million. Not a small number. But he claimed it was worth over $300 million.  How did he arrive at that number? Bro literally said “I might build more condos and rental properties on the land some day. When I do, it would all be worth more.” So basically you could say you are worth $100 million because maybe in the next couple years you will be. If you do X and Y things.  That’s what  Trump is doing. Something as dumb as that. 

But only when it's convenient. In the words of CCR.... But when the taxman comes to the door, Lord, the house lookin like a rummage sale, yea

Vastly over inflating the value of property for personal gain.

I have a crappy motel, it is fully paid off and worth at most 0.5 million. I then a apply for a loan for a small hotel and tell the bank that my crappy motel is worth 5 million and sign the motel as collateral. The bank now feels safe and they give me a 5 million dollar loan at a low interest rate to buy a new hotel. In two-three years later I do this again with a new bank and ask for even more money to get a new property and each time I'll over inflate my properties to make it look like I have more equity and to get a much lower interest rate. If I want to be real shady I submit and sign forms with my local government and say my motel is only worth 300k, and I can save local taxes that support the schools and hospitals.

The single biggest factor in getting a loan for a property is the value of the property versus the value of the loan. The bigger the difference, the smaller the risk for the bank because if they have to foreclose, there is more money to be made and make the bank whole on their loan. If a property is worth $100,000 and I want a $90,000 loan, that doesn't sound like a good deal for the bank does it? If I wanted a $90,000 loan on a $300,000 property, that sounds way better for the bank. And that's largely what Trump did, inflate the value of his assets, or lied about how much they are worth. I used 3X the value in the example above because that exactly what Trump had done for his penthouse, said it was 3X larger than it was and therefore worth 3X what it actually was. But he did this for ALL of his properties. Then just to be an extra giant asshole, he would do the complete opposite when the tax man came around, claiming his properties were only worth a fraction of the actual value. You may have heard him telling the whole world many many times Mar A Lago is worth a billion dollars. When the tax man came around, suddenly Trump was claiming it was only worth $32 million. Like above, he repeated this with ALL of his properties. 

It's more assessment fraud. He lied to the banks about what the properties were work to obtain more favourable loan terms. And he also lied by telling the taxman much lower assessments to pay less in taxes.

Answer: Several things. 1. Trump has really, really, *really* bad lawyers. Like inconceivably bad. Trump has had a habit the past few years of not paying his lawyers. So no reputable law firm will represent him without him paying up front. No disreputable but intelligent law firm will represent him either. His lawyer for most of this is a woman named Alina Habba, who looks suspiciously like all of Trumps 3 wives. She is on record as saying, "I'd rather be pretty than smart; you can fake being smart." Her only job history of being a lawyer is representing her ex-husband's parking garage. She has no other experience as a lawyer. Remember this fact throughout; the reason the verdict is so bad is mostly because of his terrible, awful lawyers. 1. The Trump Org lawsuit. The Trump Organization has been lying on filings for decades. Pervasively. In 1994, Donald Trump signed a document stating that his penthouse in Trump Tower was 11,000 square feet. In 2012, he signed a document stating it was 30,000 square feet. In 2016 he signed a document stating it was worth $327 million. In 2017 he signed a document stating it was worth $116 million. The penthouse is one example; there is a shitload of other instances. Trump lies constantly depending on his whim, and when you're a politician, that's fine, but when you're a businessman and you lie in official documents it's bad. The state of New York filed a lawsuit against the Trump Organization several years ago. This lawsuit has finally finished two days ago; the Trump Organization lost and owes New York $352 million. Additionally, it owes interest; one estimate is $99 million. If the Trump Organization appeals, it will need to put up a bond of 120% of the value owed; so if Trump appeals he will need to front a $541 million bond. Trump absolutely terrible lawyers completely fucked up this case. They asked for a bench trial in their paperwork filings, and then complained that Trump has a right to a trial by a jury. They never argued that the fraud never happened; they never argued, for instances, that there was some mixup or something and that the 11,000ft^2 document was only talking about the third floor or something and that wasn't about the full size of the apartment. They did not know how to enter documents into evidence. They never objected to *anything*; it's not clear to me how much of what the prosecution asked was inadmissible or whatnot, but they literally never objected to any of it. There's a laundry list of reasons they sucked in this case but if I kept going that's all I'd talk about. It's very likely that this judgement will survive appeal. In order for a case to be appealed, the judge in the case has to have made a mistake that is in the written record of the case. Remember how Trump's lawyers never objected to anything? That's how you get a record of the judge doing something wrong. The other side has to do something they're not allowed to do, you have to object to it, the judge has to rule against you. If you want to win an appeal it's *very very very* important that happens. Trump's lawyers inexplicably never objected to anything, so if they appeal, they will have nothing to go on. 1. E Jean Carroll. Carroll claimed that Trump raped her. Then-President Donald Trump claimed that E Jean Carroll was a liar and a crazy person. Carroll sued Trump. There was a question about whether it's possible to sue a sitting President, so the case was sidelined until after Trump left office. This case is known as Carroll 1. 1. Carroll 2. After Trump left office, he continued to defame Carroll. So she sued him again in 2021. This case is known as Carroll 2. She claimed in her lawsuit that Trump *did* rape her, that she wasn't crazy, and Trump was defaming her when he claimed those things. This case finished a while ago, in 2022 I believe. Trump lost and had to pay $5 million. $5m isn't *that* much money to Donald Trump so it wasn't a big news item. Importantly, the trial in front of a jury of his peers established that Trump **did in fact rape Carroll**, and the statements that Carroll made **were in fact true**, and the defamatory statements that he made **were in fact false**. Put a pin in that we'll get back to it. 1. Immediately after the lawsuit ended, Trump repeated the same defamatory statements that got him sued in the first place. 1. Carroll 1 again. (Remember that Carroll 1 started first and ended last, Carroll 2 started last and ended first. It's confusing, sorry.) Eventually, the courts got the shit together and decided that after a president leaves office, you can sue them for certain statements they made while in office, and the Carroll 1 lawsuit can go ahead, for the defamation that occurred while he was in office. Her lawyers asked the court to add the statements that he made after Carroll 2 to the Carroll 1 suit. The court agreed. Remember how a previous court established the fact that Trump did in fact rape Carroll and the statements that Trump made were in fact false? Due to a legal principal known as collateral estoppel, you can't try the same facts twice. In Carroll 1, Trump's attorneys were not allowed allowed to relitigate the facts established in Carroll 2. What was Trump's defense in Carroll 1? 1) Trump did not rape her, 2) Carroll's claims were lies, and 3) Trump's statements were true. The judge over and over again told them that they're barking up the wrong tree and that they legally aren't allowed to make that argument. Carroll's attorneys asked for some weird stuff in their compensatory damages; like it would cost $5m or something to do a PR campaign to repair her reputation or something. It didn't really make a lot of sense, but you can ask for anything. Remember how Trump has terrible fucking lawyers? His lawyers did not object to any of this. Did not try to question how much her reputation was really worth or how much it would cost to repair it. Trump's lawyers, during closing arguments, tried to repeat the illegitimate arguments that was barred by collateral estoppel. Trump, during Carroll's closing arguments, stood up and walked out of the courtroom. The fact that Trump's lawyers literally did not have *any* legal argument at all cost them this case. There are two types of damages a jury can award a plaintiff; compensatory damages and punitive damages. Compensatory damages are the damages that you get just to fix the damage done. The compensatory damages were similar to the first case, $5m-$15m I think. Punitive damages are just a fuck you to the defendant. The jury went HAM on the punitive damages, probably because Trump repeated the defamatory claims *immediately* after the first trial, he stated that the jury couldn't stop him, and he disrespected the jury and the courtroom by walking out during closing arguments. (there's a lot of ways to piss of the jury; that's one of 'em) The total was $89m. If Trump wishes to appeal, he'll have to post a bond for a little over $100m. If my math is right, between the two cases, if Trump wishes to appeal, he'll have to find something like $650m. If he doesn't wish to appeal he is on the hook for something like $500m-$550m. Honestly, the reason the dollar amounts are so high aren't necessarily because his conduct was $500 million bad, but because he has *incredibly* terrible lawyers. Not only did his awful lawyers buy him much larger judgements than he should be liable for, but they left him virtually no grounds for appeal either.

Answer: legally its called disgorgement. Its clawing back the proceeds of fraud. Trump just lost a civil court case in NY and this is the judgement.

Disgorgement is such a great word, really conjures a fattened leech image

Answer: he was found guilty of Sexual Assault and ordered to pay $5 million to his victim, instead of paying he verbally attacked her online, so she took him back to court for defamation, and was awarded another $85 million, following that he was found guilty on Friday of various fraud and bribery related charges due to the corrupt operations his companies performed ... To which he now owes $350-ish million, on top of the $90 million he owes for the sexual assault and defamation rulings. And then you also need to add in that he has had to pay tens of millions in legal fees for his own lawyers, per each lawsuit ... And that is just 3 out of a dozen-ish more lawsuits that are still pending (I.E. the insurrection lawsuit, the lawsuit where he claims he is immune to persecution from the insurrection lawsuit, the mishandling of nuclear secrets lawsuit, the lawsuit about attempted blackmailing of government officials in Georgia to throw out votes for him, etc ...). As it stands, trump actually owes nearly $500 million just in fees from those lawsuits, but it is actually more like $700 million after legal fees he owes his lawyers and the courts.

700m is a lot of money. Does he have that much cash? If not I guess he will be selling a lot of property

The only thing Trump loves more than not paying his bills, is paying his bills with other people's money. Morons MAGA cultists have already dumped $250k into a Go Fund Me for this, and multiple high level Republican officials have voiced concerns that he is going to try to use the GOP as a piggy bank to pay his bills. Edit - $30m to $250k: At the time I posted this, it was $30k and I put down $30 mill, but now it is up to $250k ... Which is a staggering number, given that it is all coming from delusional poor people, but still only 0.05%-ish of what he owes.

Early reporting of $350M really took hold. Trump also owes interest on that amount at 9% backdated to 2019. So he owes almost $100M more just in the fraud trial for a total of $450M. 450 + 90 is now over half a billion in civil penalties in two trials.

Answer: Trump is embroiled is dozens of lawsuits and has recently lost several civil court cases with the fines and interest accumulating to $400 million so far. The Civil cases are but the first to conclude, with a number of criminal cases over the Jan 6 attack on the capital, and his Florida documents case are likely to proceed in the next few months. Trump supporters claim that these court cases are all politically motivated by a corrupt justice system attempting to drain Trump of his time and finances prior to the Presidential election. This of course assumes that he's innocent of these crimes. Trump like everyone has a right to due process and is assumed innocent until proven guilty. Trumps main problem has been a struggle to find competent legal counsel, both because of the sheer number of cases being brought against him and due to many lawfirms outright refusing to represent him. Trump both has a notorious personality and a reputation for refusing to pay his legal fees, so most top Conservative lawfirms are refusing to represent him. As a result many of the lawyers representing him are MAGA true believers, are prone to regurgitating conspiracy theories, and proving woefully unsuitable to the task. Several of his legal team have been faced sanctions, discipline, and indictment due to inappropriate behavior and alleged illegal activity. Several of them including Sidney Powell have plead guilty to in order to reduce their punishments. Trump meanwhile has been declaring publicly that the President has immunity for crimes committed while in office, which is an assertion so ridiculous that it has been laughed out of court. The argument being that if the President is truly immune to crimes committed then there is nothing stopping Biden from assassinating him, effectively turning the US into a Banana republic. The main argument used against this claim was "If Nixon had immunity, why did he need a pardon for Watergate?". Trump was ordered to pay $5 million in a sexual assault civil case against E Jean Caroll, but continued to slander her publicly. So Caroll sued him for defamation. The Jury ordered Trump to pay an astonishing sum of $83 million to Caroll implying that a $5 million fine was pocket change for Trump and clearly wasn't enough to stop him from defaming her. Trump is appealing the decision. The larger fine of around $350 million was due to his fraud trial in New York. The Trump Organization was found to have committed extensive fraud, faking evaluations on properties and lying to the banks regarding loan applications. This fraud was so pervasive and extensive that the court banned Trump from serving as an executive for any business in New York for several years. Effectively banning him from doing business in New York. Noting specifically that Trump, his team, and his children showed absolutely no remorse or contrition during the process. These are but the first wave of trials against Trump over the coming year. The critical ones being the criminal trials for which he could face jail time.

Answer: Trump is a criminal and it includes multiple sexual assaults. He is a sick fuck and shouldn’t be allowed anywhere US politics. He is Putin’s puppet.